As a youngster, Cung Le watched martial arts movies with his mother in their San Jose apartment, fascinated at how the good guys subdued villains with flying kicks. He even acted out the roles himself.

“He could copy all the moves,” Anne Le recalled. “He was jumping around our living room, making all these ‘swoosh’ sounds when he kicked the air. I remember thinking: ‘Wow, this kid has got talent.’ “

Mom was on to something because Le now does his acting on the big screen. His biggest role yet in a growing résumé comes in “The Man With the Iron Fists,” a warriors-and-assassins saga that debuts Friday, starring Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu.

“It’s hard to believe this is happening,” said Le, 40. “I’m enjoying every moment. I’m soaking it all in.”

There’s a lot to take in as Le experiences a strange convergence in his life of both make-believe and very real violence. He has one foot on the red carpet and the other planted inside the steel cage of Ultimate Fighting Championship. As the movie hits theaters, Le already is in China where he will headline a mixed-martial arts bout on Nov. 10.

It’s a humbling moment for a Vietnamese immigrant who fled his homeland with his mother just days before the fall of Saigon and, after stays in two refugee camps, struggled to be accepted in his adopted country.

“This is what America is all about — overcoming,” Le said. “I’m extremely proud about what has happened in my life.”

At a sculpted 185 pounds, Le is an MMA fan-favorite with his lightning-quick strikes that rattle heads and break limbs. His acting portfolio has grown because he convincingly plays tough guys in the beat-’em-up, kick-’em-down genre.

“Every fighter I know wants to be an actor, but I try to steer them away from that stuff because they have no idea how hard it is,” UFC president Dana White said. “But Cung has talent and found a way to succeed in both. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

The dual career path also is surprising because Le once was a painfully shy boy who dodged bullies on the Empire Gardens Elementary School playground.

“He was very skinny, and he didn’t speak English very well,” said Anne Le, 61. “When you’re like that, they pick on you.”

Their lives had forever changed in the final, harrowing days of the war in Vietnam. On April 25, 1975, Le was not yet 3 years old when they boarded a helicopter in Saigon. His grandfather, a law-enforcement official, had arranged for his family to escape the country.

Their odyssey took them to the Philippines and Guam before reaching Salinas and finally San Jose. For a time, 11 family members squeezed into a three-bedroom house.

As he sat in his San Jose gym recently, Le recalled the anger some classmates directed at him.

“The American kids didn’t really understand what happened over there,” he said. “All they knew was a lot of GIs had died. Other kids mocked what they called my ‘yellow skin.’ There was no way to avoid being targeted.”

Anne Le enrolled him in martial arts classes around age 10 to build self-confidence. As Le learned to snap boards, his mother made him promise never to hit others.

“One day he came home with a big black eye because of me,” she recalled. “He said, ‘Mom, this is what you did! You told me not to defend myself!’ “

Le was a standout wrestler at San Jose High when he dropped his father’s surname of Hoang. His father didn’t join them in the United States for eight years, and although his parents had another child — daughter Nicole — the marriage didn’t last. Le now has no contact with him.

While Le always had aspirations of following his idol Bruce Lee into acting, his chance came after gaining prominence in the emerging sport of MMA.

He got a part in the 2009 film “Fighting” that featured Channing Tatum, who became one of Le’s good friends. In addition to Chinese martial arts films, Le has appeared in “Tekken,” based on the video game, and the science-fiction thriller “Pandorum” with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster.

When a script calls for someone to fly through the air like a whirling dervish, Le is a natural. In “The Man With the Iron Fists,” set in 19th-century China, Le plays a henchman with 1980s rocker hair who gets extended camera time in — what else? — fight scenes.

“The movie business is so tough,” said Le, who is married with three children, including two from a previous marriage. “You can’t start as a nobody and then just become a major star. It’s just like fighting. You start as an amateur. But I feel like I’ve turned pro in the film world now.”

But he also keeps entering the cage. Last November at HP Pavilion, Le was pummeled by a Brazilian fighter so badly that he left with a horribly broken nose.

Le joked that while he didn’t fear for his Hollywood career, “my agent was thinking that.” He rebounded with a victory in a July fight and now takes on former UFC middleweight champion Rich Franklin in Macau.

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